News » Research excellencehttp://www.bates.edu/news
Tue, 03 Mar 2015 21:46:54 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.1‘Plucked': Race, gender, science, medicine converge in history of hair removalhttp://www.bates.edu/news/2015/02/04/85879/
http://www.bates.edu/news/2015/02/04/85879/#commentsWed, 04 Feb 2015 20:31:02 +0000http://www.bates.edu/news/?p=85879"Plucked: A History of Hair Removal," a new social history by Bates College professor Rebecca Herzig, weaves together for the first time Americans' shifting beliefs about facial and body hair with the technology and business of body modification.]]>

Rebecca Herzig is the author of Plucked: A History of Hair Removal in America and is the Christian A. Johnson Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Bates.

According to some estimates, virtually all American women have tried facial and bodily hair removal. Most remove some hair regularly, if not daily. And for the majority of men, despite the fad for the full “lumbersexual” beard, a clean shave is still the look.

If hair removal is common, though, that doesn’t make it trivial. Ever since Europeans arrived on these shores, what Americans have done with their hair has signaled racial and social status, political and cultural orientation, and even our views on freedom — all the while giving medicine, science and industry lucrative new markets.

Plucked: A History of Hair Removal, a new social history from New York University Press, weaves together for the first time Americans’ shifting beliefs about facial and body hair with the technology and business of body modification.

“You might be surprised what the history of hair removal can tell us,” says Plucked author Rebecca M. Herzig, professor of women and gender studies at Bates. “I know I was surprised when I learned that millions of Americans once used X-rays to get rid of unwanted facial hair.

“I was more surprised to discover that, even when X-ray hair removal was banned because the radiation was so harmful, many women continued to seek it out because the stigma of facial hair seemed worse than the threat of cancer.”

Those are among the discoveries that led Herzig, a historian of science, to write Plucked. The book describes some of the dozens of methods Americans have used to try to remove body hair, from razors to harsh chemicals to lasers and even to genetic engineering.

Herzig also explores society’s evolving views of “normal” hair growth and what deviations from the norm might signify.

Until the mid-19th century, Americans of European descent looked askance at the meticulous hair removal practices of Native Americans. Yet in subsequent decades, hairiness — especially on women’s faces — was variously interpreted as a sign of racial inferiority, criminality, sexual perversion or political radicalism. Feminists in the 1960s and ’70s challenged some of those associations, transforming body hair into a symbol of self-determination.

“I use the history of hair removal to explore Americans’ changing ideas about what’s necessary, what’s natural and what’s good,” Herzig says.

Driving Plucked is its depiction of the elaborate dance between, on the one hand, those changing ideas, and on the other, the changing scientific and industrial practices that both accommodate and shape cultural perspectives.

For example, Herzig details how a clean shave became a norm for men only after World War I. During that conflict, a smooth skin was deemed necessary to ensure a properly fitting gas mask, and razor manufacturer Gillette laid the groundwork for a postwar market by supplying the U.S. military with safety razors.

Titled “Genpuku yoshi” (“It’s good to become an adult”), this 19th-century woodcut print by Hokkei Totoya shows a woman on a lucky day for shaving her eyebrows. (Library of Congress)

As Herzig points out, “individual choice” in the realm of personal body care is a fallacy. “When we talk about ‘freedom’ in the U.S. and other advanced industrial societies, we often assume that the choices we make about our bodies are only about our bodies. But they never are, and never have been.

“Big forces are at work here. The wax that has made ‘Brazilian’ a household word is a byproduct of global petroleum production. All the depilatories we manufacture and consume end up in our waterways and landfills,” she says.

“Our choosing selves are never free of larger social and ecological entanglements.”

Herzig’s previous books include Suffering for Science: Reason and Sacrifice in Modern America (Rutgers University Press, 2005), which explores the rise of an ethic of “self-sacrifice” in American science; and, with Evelynn M. Hammonds, The Nature of Difference: Sciences of Race in the United States from Jefferson to Genomics (MIT Press, 2009), a history of scientific studies of human variation.

Herzig is chair of the Program in Women and Gender Studies at Bates, where she has taught for more than 15 years. She has won numerous awards for her work, including the college’s Kroepsch Award for Excellence in Teaching, and currently holds the Christian A. Johnson Chair in Interdisciplinary Studies. Read about Herzig’s lecture marking her appointment to the Johnson Chair.

The Johnson Professorship, supported by an endowment established by the Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation, recognizes a faculty member who has made transformative contributions to interdisciplinary studies.

Herzig received her doctorate in the history and social study of science and technology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her bachelor’s degree in American cultural and environmental studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

]]>http://www.bates.edu/news/2015/02/04/85879/feed/0Bates doubly recognized for community engagementhttp://www.bates.edu/news/2015/01/30/bates-doubly-recognized-for-community-engagement/
http://www.bates.edu/news/2015/01/30/bates-doubly-recognized-for-community-engagement/#commentsFri, 30 Jan 2015 17:11:32 +0000http://www.bates.edu/news/?p=83731A longtime leader in building community engagement into the liberal arts education, Bates recently received national recognition for that work from both a federal agency and a major foundation.]]>

A longtime leader in building community engagement into the liberal arts education, Bates College recently received national recognition for that work from both a federal agency and a major foundation.

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has selected Bates for its Community Engagement Classification for the second time, a distinction held by only 157 colleges nationwide.

The recognition is based on myriad aspects of community engagement, from impacts on student learning, to ways in which a college evaluates and rewards faculty involvement, to the community’s assessments of Bates’ value as a partner.

At the same time, Bates has again been named to the President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll With Distinction. Through the Honor Roll, the federal Corporation for National and Community Service recognizes colleges and universities that embody exemplary community service while raising the visibility of effective practices in campus-community partnerships.

“The Carnegie Foundation’s classification is the gold standard for community engagement work in higher education,” says Darby Ray, director of the Harward Center, the Bates office that facilitates the college’s partnerships with the community. She adds, “To earn a place on the Honor Roll year in and year out, usually ‘With Distinction,’ is a wonderful affirmation of the college’s commitment to innovative pedagogy and the public good.”

Colette Girardin ’16, Rusty Epstein ’13 and Nancy Weidner ’13 perform “Seussical the Musical” in May 2013 during the Robinson Players’ annual production for local schoolchildren. (Mike Bradley/Bates College)

Among the programs in Lewiston and beyond that Bates cited on its President’s Honor Roll application were initiatives in environmental education, the arts and childhood literacy. Bates and Saint Joseph’s College are the only Maine schools on the 2014 honor roll. Bates has been listed on the roll every year since the program’s inception, in 2006.

According to Ray, the President’s Honor Roll evaluates an institution’s most noteworthy projects and partnerships in a given year, and it considers the annual participation rates of students and faculty in community-engaged work.

Bates has long recognized that mutual relationships and shared action are essential if both the college and its surrounding communities are to flourish. Students’ community-engaged work includes learning or participatory research connected to courses; senior thesis research, research fellowships or summer fellowships; one-time or ongoing volunteer opportunities; and leadership development projects.

From September 2012 through August 2013 (the most recent year for which data is available):

The Harward Center awarded $202,666 in grants or fellowships to faculty, staff, students and community partners to support civic engagement work.

1,143 Bates students performed 50,363 documented hours of academically based community work.

12,629 of those hours were provided in connection with the public schools.
Fifty-one courses included a community-engaged learning component, representing 23 of the college’s 32 academic departments and programs.

In contrast to Carnegie’s standard system of classifying colleges and universities, which is based on public data and includes virtually all U.S. schools, the Carnegie Community Engagement Classification results from an elective, rigorous application process. This approach enables schools to spotlight aspects of their missions and programs that Carnegie would not find in public data.

“What they’re looking for is that community engagement is truly an embedded, systemic institutional priority,” Ray says. “They push colleges and universities not only to report on past accomplishments, but also to establish improved systems and practices for the future.

“For Bates, where our institutional mission emphasizes the cultivation of informed civic action and responsible stewardship of the wider world, the Carnegie classification is a vitally important confirmation of past accomplishments and future direction.”

Kat Harling ’17, left, and Grace Boueri ’16 weigh twigs in Garcelon Bog, an important wetland in Lewiston, as part of carbon-sequestration research carried out by an environmental studies class. (Sarah Crosby/Bates College)

Bates, which first received the Community Engagement Classification in 2008, was one of 157 schools to be reclassified this year. Eighty-three colleges and universities received the classification for the first time in 2015, while 121 earned the classification during a selection process in 2010. All told, 361 institutions hold the classification.

In Maine, besides Bates, those schools are Saint Joseph’s and Unity colleges and the University of Maine System campuses at Orono and Machias.

On the President’s Honor Roll, meanwhile, Bates was one of 121 schools honored “With Distinction” in the General Community Service category, and one of 22 so designated in the Education category. (The other categories are Interfaith Community Service and Economic Opportunity.)

Established in 1993, the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) is a federal agency that engages more than 5 million Americans in service through programs such as AmeriCorps and the Social Innovation Fund.

]]>http://www.bates.edu/news/2015/01/30/bates-doubly-recognized-for-community-engagement/feed/3‘Future-proof': Second of its kind in Maine, new microscope is a game-changerhttp://www.bates.edu/news/2015/01/15/future-proof-second-of-its-kind-in-maine-new-microscope-is-a-game-changer/
http://www.bates.edu/news/2015/01/15/future-proof-second-of-its-kind-in-maine-new-microscope-is-a-game-changer/#commentsThu, 15 Jan 2015 20:38:23 +0000http://www.bates.edu/news/?p=83376Bates College is now home to a state-of-the-art confocal microscope, only the second of its kind in the state, that professors call a "game-changer" for student learning and faculty research.]]>

Bates College is now home to a state-of-the-art microscope, only the second of its kind in the state, that professors call a “game-changer” for student learning and faculty research.

Called a “confocal” microscope because of the optical technology it employs, the new Leica SP8 is a versatile, user-friendly device that gives Bates a variety of important new or improved imaging capabilities. Bates was able to obtain the microscope through a grant awarded by the National Science Foundation.

Taken with a confocal microscope, this image shows two adjacent neurons filled red and green fluorescent dye. The image, says Bates neuroscientist Nancy Kleckner, can tell researchers if the cells are coupled, “that is, whether the dye could leak from one cell to the other.” These types of neurons are involved in regulating feeding in pond snails, a specific focus of Kleckner’s research.

The microscope can create three-dimensional internal images of transparent specimens. In addition, unlike some other high-resolution imaging technologies, confocal microscopy requires only minimal, non-destructive specimen preparation — meaning, for instance, that biologists can use it to examine structures and processes within living cells.

The new scope will support research in disciplines including biology, neuroscience, nanotechnology and photophysics.

The Bates scientists awarded the grant are Matthew Cote, associate professor of chemistry; Travis Gould, assistant professor of physics; Nancy Kleckner, associate professor of biology; and Larissa Williams, assistant professor of biology and the leader of the application and acquisition process.

The NSF awarded Bates the $791,480 grant in September, and the German-built Leica was installed in a microscopy suite in the college’s Carnegie Science Hall in November. The grant was approved on the applicants’ first try. There are other confocal microscopes in Maine, but “the only comparable microscope to the Leica is at The Jackson Laboratory, in Bar Harbor,” said Joseph Tomaras, associate director of Bates’ office for external grants.

If the Bates team is elated by the Leica’s features and research potential, Williams explains that in terms of Bates’ teaching capacity, the new scope is a game-changer. “It’s incredibly important that students have access to this state-of-art technology,” she says.

“This microscope is future-proof.”

Confocal microscopy uses lasers, computers and optical elements to compose a complete image one pixel at a time. Key to this process is a version of the art-photography student’s old friend, the pinhole, which helps remove unwanted information from the image. While the basic principles of the system date back nearly 60 years, it took decades for technology to catch up with theory.

Say “cheese”! A zebrafish depicted by a confocal microscope.

These microscopes create optical sections — the rendering of images in thin uniform layers that can be digitally stacked into a three-dimensional representation. For Williams and Kleckner, this ability to look inside cells is key.

Kleckner’s plans for the scope include research into the nervous systems of pond snails and zebrafish. Williams, who studies the effects of environmental toxicants on animal development, also works with zebrafish, but in the embryonic stage.

Both rely on so-called fluorescence microscopy, in which certain wavelengths of light are used to “excite” — or cause to glow — biological specimens that have been treated with fluorescent dye or genetically modified to light up. Until now — barring a road trip to use confocal scopes in Bar Harbor or at Bowdoin College — their go-to imaging tools were widefield scopes that can’t create optical sections.

The SP8 is a big step forward. “It allows us to make crisp, well-resolved images of deep cellular structures that our older microscopes would show as fuzzy,” says Williams.

For Gould, who specializes in nanoscopy, the Leica’s user-friendliness is an asset when he needs to test results from an experimental microscope that he or a student is working on. “You can just throw your sample on there, and see what you’ve got, in a quick and easy interface.” He’s also intrigued by the SP8’s ability to analyze the workings of fluorescent particles over a period of time within a sample.

The confocal workstation. The Leica microscope itself is to the left of the monitors. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/Bates College)

And the new scope’s ability to produce finely tuned wavelengths of laser light to illuminate samples is an advantage across the board.

Cote’s research is in nanotechnology, and the more precisely he can control the color of light that he trains onto nanostructures, the better he can understand their distinctive features.

“The bottom line is that, I think, Leica really has the best system out there, hands down,” says Gould. “It’s extremely flexible, extremely powerful, extremely easy to use. We’re very fortunate that we were able to get a system like this.

“And very fortunate that we got the grant for it on the first try, which is usually not the case.”

The confocal scope shares Bates’ microscopy suite with a JEOL scanning electron microscope that the college purchased in 2012. The two instruments are complementary. The SEM can depict smaller objects than the confocal, Cote explains, and is also equipped to chemically identify elements in a specimen. But preparing specimens for it can be destructive to them.

The confocal microscope provides non-destructive, true three-dimensional imaging, even of internal cellular structures and even of live cells. In fact, says Gould, “With the confocal you can target specific biomolecules for imaging, which is an important advantage over electron microscopy.”

“Because of the SP8’s capabilities, researchers at Bowdoin wrote to the NSF in support of our proposal,” Tomaras said. He added that the microscope will be incorporated into professional training in advanced imaging for faculty and students at Southern Maine Community College.

One of several crates in which the Leica SP8 arrived at Bates in November 2014. (Sarah Crosby/Bates College)

]]>http://www.bates.edu/news/2015/01/15/future-proof-second-of-its-kind-in-maine-new-microscope-is-a-game-changer/feed/0Herzig to speak on science, suffering and feminismhttp://www.bates.edu/news/2014/11/20/marking-appointment-to-endowed-chair-herzig-to-speak-on-science-suffering-and-feminism/
http://www.bates.edu/news/2014/11/20/marking-appointment-to-endowed-chair-herzig-to-speak-on-science-suffering-and-feminism/#commentsThu, 20 Nov 2014 13:31:03 +0000http://www.bates.edu/news/?p=82464Rebecca Herzig marks her appointment to an endowed professorship at Bates College with a lecture on Dec. 2.]]>

The lecture is open to the public at no cost. A reception follows immediately in Pettengill’s Perry Atrium. For more information, please call 207-786-8371.

Herzig is a historian of science whose research focuses on the relationships between technology, race and gender in the United States.

Her book Plucked: A History of Hair Removal in America, to be published by NYU Press in January 2015, examines techniques that Americans have used to remove their own hair, and the array of social forces — including beliefs about beauty and self-determination — that create expectations about hair and hair removal.

Herzig received a National Science Foundation grant in 2008 to support her research into cosmetic applications of studies of the human genome, including gene-based hair retardation.

In 2005, Herzig published Suffering for Science: Reason and Sacrifice in Modern America (Rutgers University Press), exploring the rise of an ethic of “self-sacrifice” in American science. The book describes how supposedly rational scientists came to embrace a culture of toil, danger and even lethal dismemberment.

Co-edited with Evelynn M. Hammonds, Herzig’s second book was The Nature of Difference: Sciences of Race in the United States from Jefferson to Genomics (The MIT Press, 2009). This collection addresses changing scientific studies of human variation.

Herzig is chair of the Program in Women and Gender Studies at Bates, where she has taught for more than 15 years. She has won numerous awards for her work, including the college’s Kroepsch Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Herzig received her doctorate in the history and social study of science and technology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her bachelor’s degree in American cultural and environmental studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

The Johnson Professorship, supported by an endowment established by the Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation, recognizes a faculty member who has made transformative contributions to interdisciplinary studies.

]]>http://www.bates.edu/news/2014/11/20/marking-appointment-to-endowed-chair-herzig-to-speak-on-science-suffering-and-feminism/feed/0An award-winning poet, Crystal Williams to read in Language Arts Live eventhttp://www.bates.edu/news/2014/11/17/an-award-winning-poet-crystal-williams-to-read-in-language-arts-live-event/
http://www.bates.edu/news/2014/11/17/an-award-winning-poet-crystal-williams-to-read-in-language-arts-live-event/#commentsMon, 17 Nov 2014 16:09:04 +0000http://www.bates.edu/news/?p=82194The author of four collections of poems, Crystal Williams reads from her work in a Language Arts Live event at Bates College on Nov. 19.]]>

Crystal Williams, Bates’ chief diversity officer and an associate vice president and English professor, is an award-winning poet.

The author of four collections of poems, Crystal Williams reads from her work in a Language Arts Live event at Bates College at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 19, in the Edmund S. Muskie Archives, 70 Campus Ave.

Sponsored by the English department, Language Arts Live readings are open to the public at no cost. Williams’ books will be available for purchase and for signing by the poet following the reading. For more information, please call 207-786-6326.

Williams’ most recent collection is Detroit as Barn, published in May by the University of Washington Press. The book was a finalist for the National Poetry Series and Cleveland State Open Book Prize.

Her third collection, Troubled Tongues (Lotus Press, 2009), was awarded the 2009 Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the 2009 Oregon Book Award.

Widely anthologized, Williams’ poems appear in such journals and publications as The American Poetry Review, Tin House, The Northwest Review, 5AM, The Sun, Ms. Magazine, The Indiana Review, Court Green and Callaloo, among others.

Raised in Detroit and in Madrid, Spain, Williams holds degrees from New York University and Cornell University, and has received numerous fellowships, grants and honors, including a 2010 appointment as the Mary Rogers Field Distinguished University Professor of Creative Writing at DePauw University and a 2012 appointment to the Oregon Arts Commission by Gov. John Kitzhaber.

She served on the faculty of Reed College for 11 years before being appointed Reed’s inaugural dean for institutional diversity. In 2013 she was appointed associate vice president, chief diversity officer and professor of English at Bates.

]]>http://www.bates.edu/news/2014/11/17/an-award-winning-poet-crystal-williams-to-read-in-language-arts-live-event/feed/0Dead clams talking: $337,000 grant supports clamshell-climate researchhttp://www.bates.edu/news/2014/10/27/dead-clams-talking-337000-grant-supports-clamshell-climate-research/
http://www.bates.edu/news/2014/10/27/dead-clams-talking-337000-grant-supports-clamshell-climate-research/#commentsMon, 27 Oct 2014 17:31:12 +0000http://www.bates.edu/news/?p=81883An oceanographer and a geologist at Bates have received a National Science Foundation grant to create a 1,000-year record of changing sea and climate conditions in the Norwegian Arctic.]]>

An oceanographer and a geologist at Bates have received a National Science Foundation grant to create a 1,000-year record of changing sea and climate conditions in the Norwegian Arctic.

Professor of Biology William Ambrose and Professor of Geology Michael Retelle received $337,228 from the NSF for their three-year research project, which will analyze the natural record archived in clamshells over the course of a millennium to plot changes in sea temperature where the Barents and Norwegian seas meet.

The researchers hope that this history of water conditions, which will span two historic periods of significant, naturally occurring temperature shifts in addition to contemporary climate change, can provide insight into major ocean currents and other phenomena related to climate.

“We’re interested in what triggers rapid climate change, and changes in the ocean conditions and currents may be a key,” says Ambrose.

Arctica islandica, older and younger. (Dan Frost ’05)

Ambrose and Retelle are focusing on the ocean quahog or Iceland quahog, aka Arctica islandica, a mollusk found across the North Atlantic. This species, Ambrose explains, “is the longest-lived multicellular animal” — one specimen caught off Iceland was more than 500 years old — “and so we get a very long history of growth and environmental conditions embedded in the shell.”

Clams and other bivalves produce annual lines in their shells, similar to the rings in tree trunks, that can be used to measure growth and that closely reflect conditions, notably temperature, that prevailed during the course of a year. (Perhaps counterintuitively, warmer water results in slower growth and narrower growth lines in the quahogs Ambrose and Retelle are studying.)

In combination with other techniques such as carbon-dating, growth-line patterns from living and dead clams can be matched up and strung together into long chronologies. An Arctica chronology in Iceland dating back 1,357 years was created by a team including University of Iowa paleoclimatologist Alan Wanamaker, who is partnering with Ambrose and Retelle on the Norway project. Wanamaker has done similar work with clams from the Gulf of Maine.

Retelle and Ambrose are doing their field research on Ingøya and Rolvsøya, islands in Finnmark, Norway’s northernmost county. Not only are Arctica islandica abundant and easily harvested there, but also favorable to the research is the islands’ location relative to the Norwegian and Barents seas and to major currents including the Gulf Stream.

The islands’ geology, too, favors this research. Ingøya and Rolvsøya were once covered with glaciers, Retelle explains, and at its greatest extent during the last glaciation, the weight of the ice depressed the earth’s crust below sea level. As the glaciers melted and retreated, the land surface rebounded, leaving a succession of former beaches that are progressively older with increasing elevation.

“We have this staircase of beaches that go down to the present sea level,” Retelle says. “We think that they might go back 6,000 years or more. We’re able to trace beaches from higher elevations, like 20 meters above sea level, down to modern sea level.

“And the beaches contain a really nice assortment of these clamshells.”

Ambrose and Retelle’s 1,000-year chronology will cover the Medieval Climate Optimum, a warm period that lasted from about 950 to 1250, and the Little Ice Age, which ran from 1550 to 1850.

These old beaches rebounded above sea level as melting glaciers retreated and released them from heavy ice. (Michael Retelle/Bates College)

A fair amount is known about the climate during these periods from other sources and other regions, Retelle explains. But these clamshell records are valuable because they represent known climate events year by year. “If we can see those events in the annual record in the clams, then we can actually pin down the timing — and maybe causes — of climate change in the last millennium.”

And Arctica islandica‘s broad geographical range provides the potential for a portfolio of such chronologies that would clarify regional variation in the impacts of climatic phenomena. Wanamaker, says Retelle, “has worked with the same species everywhere from the Gulf of Maine up to Finnmark.”

The Ambrose-Retelle research team for this project consists of 10 scientists from the U.S., Norway and the Netherlands. Bates students will take part in the research starting next year, the second year of the three-year effort.

A member of the Bates class of 2005 who studied with Retelle, Farmington native Frost served as teacher-in-residence with the research team during its first session of field work last summer. “He was involved in every aspect” of the research, Retelle says. Frost will use material from the field in both his classes and in public lectures.

Ambrose is the principal investigator and Retelle is the co-principal investigator for the project, titled “Collaborative research: Exploring the role of oceanic and atmospheric forcing on Arctic marine climate from newly developed annual shell based records in coastal Norway.”

]]>http://www.bates.edu/news/2014/10/27/dead-clams-talking-337000-grant-supports-clamshell-climate-research/feed/0Biomedical research at Bates gets $459K boost from INBREhttp://www.bates.edu/news/2014/07/23/biomedical-research-at-bates-gets-459k-boost-from-inbre/
http://www.bates.edu/news/2014/07/23/biomedical-research-at-bates-gets-459k-boost-from-inbre/#commentsWed, 23 Jul 2014 19:38:54 +0000http://www.bates.edu/news/?p=80305Thanks to funding from a partnership of institutions in Maine, Bates will receive more than $459,000 this year to support biomedical research.]]>

Thanks to funding from a network of research and educational institutions in Maine, Bates will receive more than $459,000 this year to support biomedical research.

The grant will pay for two faculty projects involving advanced genomic research, as well as other programs and equipment.

Bates is one of 13 partner institutions across Maine that share money from the IDeA Networks of Biomedical Research Excellence program, aka INBRE. With similar programs across the U.S., INBRE is funded by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, one of the National Institutes of Health.

Assistant Professor of Psychology Jason Castro teaches a Short Term course in which he and his students designed a new neuroscience course with a computer-programming emphasis. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/Bates College)

In Maine, INBRE supports projects in biology, biochemistry and neuroscience that focus on functional genomics, a branch of molecular biology that seeks to use the massive amounts of data produced by genomic projects to understand how genes function.

Assistant professors Larissa Williams, a biologist, and Jason Castro, a neuroscientist, are the Bates research grant recipients. In a competitive process, their projects were awarded $92,000 apiece annually for five years. All told, INBRE funding for Bates over the next five years could total nearly $2.3 million.

Using zebrafish as her test subjects, Williams is investigating a protein known as Nfe2 and its role in protecting embryonic fish against the harmful effects of chemicals that create reactive oxygen species, better known as oxidants. Essential to life in small amounts, oxidants wreak biological havoc in larger quantities.

Williams’ lab is one of only three that have published research on the gene responsible for the production of Nfe2 in zebrafish. The gene is found in humans and other animals as well as fish.

“We’re really going to be breaking scientific ground by looking into the effect of the gene,” she says.

Bates biology professor Larissa Williams discusses the image of a zebrafish embryo at the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory on July 23. Mostly from Bates, the students with her are, from left, Nabil Saleem ’15, Roshni Mangar (College of the Atlantic ’16), Katie Paulson ’15 and Sophie Salas ’15. (Bill Church/MDIBL)

Using fish that have been rendered unable to produce the protein, she’ll test the effects of oxidative stress-causing compounds like TBHQ, a common food preservative; the herbicide diquat; and ethanol, better known as beverage alcohol.

In addition to expenses like student stipends and material goods like zebrafish and chemicals, INBRE funds will defray the considerable costs of sequencing the genomes of Williams’ zebrafish subjects to understand the effects of disabling the Nfe2 gene.

Her student assistants, says Williams, will be “getting cutting-edge training in molecular biology and bioinformatics — essentially big biological data sets. It’s the way biology is going, so students will get great training in working with and interpreting these data sets.

“That’s a very, very good skill set to have nowadays.”

Castro studies the olfactory bulb, the part of the brain that directly receives information about odors from the nose. In this project, he seeks to understand the organization of that structure, specifically whether the bulb is divided into circuit modules that can be identified through genomic data mining.

Those data-mining studies will be supplemented with physiological and anatomical research to determine whether, or how, the olfactory bulb modules are distinguished from one another physiologically and in their neurological connectivity.

In other words, can genomic analysis be used to anticipate physiological structure and function? “The research will try to ‘close the loop’ — that is, experimentally test predictions based on data mining,” Castro says. “That’s something that has been historically tough to do.”

Castro predicts that the tools and techniques used in the project will be valuable for studying circuit structures throughout the brain, including pathologies underlying psychiatric disorders.

INBRE programs operate in 23 states or U.S. territories. Bates joined Maine’s INBRE program in 2001, the year it was created.

INBRE is important to the growth and stability of the scientific establishment in states that receive comparatively low amounts of NIH funding. The program pays for resources that might otherwise be out of reach — for instance, the data sets that both Castro and Williams will draw on for their research.

“The INBRE grants really allow us to train up-and-coming scientists and create new knowledge in an era where other sources of federal science funding are at a low level,” says Williams.

In addition to supporting individual faculty research at Bates, INBRE provides institutional support, with an emphasis on student research and travel: INBRE funds six or seven faculty-student research grants and two summer fellowships for undergraduates each year.

INBRE helped build the Imaging and Computing Center at Bates, and pays for Bates students who take two-week laboratory courses each spring during Short Term at the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory, the lead institution for INBRE in Maine. It also supports collaborations between partner institutions, such as a molecular biology and bio-imaging course Bates is undertaking later this summer with Southern Maine Community College.

Since INBRE’s inception, it has brought $50 million in federal funds into Maine, improved research infrastructure and trained more than 2,000 Maine students in biomedical research techniques, according to the MDIBL. INBRE grants have led to the creation of more than 100 new high-paying Maine jobs in research and education.

In addition to Bates and MDIBL, the member institutions are a second major research facility, The Jackson Laboratory; the University of Maine, its University of Maine Honors College, University of Maine System campuses at Farmington, Fort Kent, Machias and Presque Isle; Southern Maine Community College; Colby and Bowdoin colleges and the College of the Atlantic.

]]>http://www.bates.edu/news/2014/07/23/biomedical-research-at-bates-gets-459k-boost-from-inbre/feed/0New book by sociologist Duina studies American view of life transitionshttp://www.bates.edu/news/2014/07/22/francesco-duinas-life-transitions-in-america/
http://www.bates.edu/news/2014/07/22/francesco-duinas-life-transitions-in-america/#commentsTue, 22 Jul 2014 18:08:55 +0000http://www.bates.edu/news/?p=79711Known for a study of the American focus on winning, Bates sociologist Francesco Duina views the emotional landscape from a different perspective in his new book.]]>

Professor of Sociology Francesco Duina. (Morris Freeman)

Known for a 2010 study of the American focus on winning, Bates sociologist Francesco Duina views the emotional landscape from a different perspective in his new book, Life Transitions in America (Polity Press).

The book is a thorough exploration of how transitions as central to our lives as going to college, marrying and dying are tied together in American culture — and Duina contrasts American perceptions of transition with those of other nations.

Rather than focusing on a single type of transition, such as childbirth or post-military life, the book examines eight: starting college, getting married, the first child, losing a job, surviving a life-threatening disease, divorce, parents’ death and retirement.

While such shifts have been the object of much study, typically they have been examined as individual occurrences, not as interlinked aspects running throughout an entire culture.

“As does any other society, Americans share certain basic interpretations about how to make sense of transitional moments,” Duina said in an interview. “Yet no one that I could find has investigated what those interpretations, those voices, are. I wanted to shed light on them.”

In addition to calling upon traditional scientific studies, Duina makes use of unorthodox methods and sources — for instance, he compares the categorization and amount of self-help and life-guide books stocked by American, British, Italian, French and Spanish booksellers, and the content of Hallmark cards.

Duina also looks at religious texts, politicians, business leaders, athletes, popular media, government law, college statements, hospital policies and advertisements.

He acknowledges that his approach is novel and that it raises as many questions as it answers. He invites readers to question his conclusions and develop their own interpretations of the subject matter. He acknowledges variations in how these transitions are perceived, and that they are not universal but vary by demographic and life circumstances. And he often compares and contrasts the American perspective with those of other countries.

“They talk about them in often very optimistic, individualistic and perhaps aggressive fashion — even potentially very painful transitions, like losing one’s parents, are cast in that light,” he says.

“We’re told that many transitions present us with wonderful opportunities for new beginnings, for creating something new — but this is not the whole story. There is also a strand that focuses on our connections with others, the cycle of life and inevitability. All this makes for a very intriguing and unique combination of views.”

The inevitability of change is one thing that doesn’t change, and whether one’s interest is piqued by their own cultural observations or their own lives, Life Transitions in America offers an opportunity to understand these passages in more depth.

Duina has authored four other books: In addition to Winning, they are Institutions and the Economy (Polity Press, 2011), an examination of role of institutions in shaping economic behavior; The Social Construction of Free Trade (Princeton University Press, 2006), an analysis of legal and social change across the world; and Harmonizing Europe (SUNY Press, 1999), focused on political exchanges within the European Union.

]]>http://www.bates.edu/news/2014/07/22/francesco-duinas-life-transitions-in-america/feed/0Microsoft’s Susan Dumais ’75 is a big reason why, computer-wise, you find what you seekhttp://www.bates.edu/news/2014/05/01/microsoft-susan-dumais-75/
http://www.bates.edu/news/2014/05/01/microsoft-susan-dumais-75/#commentsThu, 01 May 2014 15:58:28 +0000http://www.bates.edu/news/?p=77347Dumais' contributions have touched how we find, use and make sense of information from our computers and the Internet.]]>

The next time you get a good answer from a web search, you can thank Susan Dumais ’75.

Beginning with landmark research in the 1980s, Dumais has made fundamental contributions to how we find, use and make sense of information on the Internet and in our computers.

For her achievements, Dumais was recently named the 2014-15 Athena Lecturer by the Association for Computing Machinery’s Council on Women in Computing.

Susan Dumais ’75 of Microsoft Research is the 2014-15 Athena Lecturer.

“Her sustained contributions have shaped the thinking and direction of human-computer interaction and information retrieval,” said Mary Jane Irwin, who heads the Athena Lecture awards committee.

The Athena award celebrates female researchers who have made fundamental contributions to computer science.

The author of more than 200 articles on information science, human-computer interaction and cognitive science, Dumais is a Distinguished Scientist and deputy managing director of the Microsoft Research Lab in Redmond, Wash.

A native of Lewiston who grew up on Nichols Street near campus, Dumais was a magna cum laude mathematics and psychology major at Bates.

As a student, she did research with Drake Bradley, the Charles A. Dana Professor Emeritus of Psychology, co-authoring a research article on subjective contours that appeared in the journal Nature.

Being published as a student? “Pretty awesome,” she recalls. The pair also explored ways to use computer software to improve the teaching of statistics.

“She was one of the best students I ever had,” says Bradley, a comment echoed by Robert Moyer, professor emeritus of psychology, who says that Dumais “was one of the very best researchers I ever worked with — student or otherwise.”

Research with Bates professors in the 1970s, including this article with Robert Moyer, presaged Dumais’ work to shape the direction of human-computer interaction and information retrieval.

Dumais headed to Indiana University for doctoral work, but didn’t leave Bates behind.

In 1979, she teamed with Moyer and a University of Michigan researcher to publish the article “Semantic association effects in a mental comparison task,” in the journal Memory & Cognition.

The researchers measured how long it took subjects to say which item in a pair was larger, such as flea or dog, needle or boat, penguin or iceberg.

Subjects were able to judge the size of semantically related terms (such as dog and flea) more quickly than unrelated terms (needle and boat).

To be sure, the researchers’ conclusions went deeper than that, but the thrust of Dumais’ work — modeling how human memory works — was a leaping-off point for a career exploring how humans can better communicate with their machines.

(Fun Bates connection: At Indiana, Dumais met a “fantastic teacher doing research in biopsychology” who joined the Bates faculty the next year. That professor was John Kelsey, who retired in 2012 after a great career at Bates.)

Ph.D. in hand from Indiana, Dumais was on her way. After looking at how humans retrieve information from our own memories, she began looking at how we retrieve information from external sources, such as computers.

In the 1980s, Dumais was researcher at Bell Labs when she co-authored a paper exploring “the vocabulary problem,” the fact that computer users always had to key in the exact, correct word to get what they wanted from their machine.

Reading like a manifesto for the information age, the paper explained the problem:

Many functions of most large [computer] systems depend on users typing in the right words. New or intermittent users often use the wrong words and fail to get the actions or information they want. This is the vocabulary problem. It is a troublesome impediment in computer interactions both simple (file access and command entry) and complex (database query and natural language dialog). In what follows we report evidence on the extent of the vocabulary problem and propose both a diagnosis and a cure. The fundamental observation is that people use a surprisingly great variety of words to refer to the same thing.

Today, in terms of how we find stuff on the Internet, whether cute kittens or Red Sox highlights, LSI acts as an indexing and retrieval method. It helps our search experience by deciding if words that share similar contexts also share a similar meaning, and thus should be elevated as a search result.

Dumais was a co-author of the seminal 1990 paper that described Latent Semantic Indexing, a revolutionary way to index and retrieve information.

“For example,” Dumais says, “LSI would find that the words ‘physician’ and ‘doctor’ are similar not because they co-occur together but because they occur with many of the same words, such as ‘nurse,’ ‘patient,’ or ‘hospital.'”

Essentially, she adds, “LSI induces the similarity among words by looking at the company they keep.”

Dumais’ most recent research at Microsoft analyzes how web content changes over time, how people revisit web pages, and how searching can be improved by modeling the context of the search.

By context, she means “who is asking, what task they are trying to accomplish, and what documents are of interest.”

That means you get your own search results. “So if I, Susan Dumais, search for SIGIR, I probably mean the ‘Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval’ and not the ‘Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.'”

In a good sense, Dumais sees no end to the work ahead.

The ability to search for information, she says, will support an “ever-increasing range of information, services and communications.”

]]>http://www.bates.edu/news/2014/05/01/microsoft-susan-dumais-75/feed/5Student research spans the disciplines at today’s Mount David Summithttp://www.bates.edu/news/2014/03/25/student-research-spans-the-disciplines-at-13th-annual-mount-david-summit/
http://www.bates.edu/news/2014/03/25/student-research-spans-the-disciplines-at-13th-annual-mount-david-summit/#commentsTue, 25 Mar 2014 14:45:32 +0000http://www.bates.edu/news/?p=76922The "premier academic event of the year" is today. Stop by if you're in the area!]]>

David Harning ’13 of Rye, N.H., talks about his sediment core research in New Zealand during the 2013 Mount David Summit. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/Bates College)

Featuring diverse student presentations including poster talks, panels and performances, the summit is open to the public at no cost. For more information, please visit bates.edu/summit or contact Kerry O’Brien at kobrien@bates.edu or 207-753-6952.

“The Mount David Summit is the premier academic event of the year at Bates. It’s something that just should not be missed,” says sociology professor Emily W. Kane, who will be moderating a session of research talks by senior sociology majors.

More than 350 students will take part in this year’s summit. In Pettengill Hall, during concurrent sessions throughout the afternoon, students will present research posters, short talks, panel discussions, a photography exhibition, literary readings and several films.

Students will present more than 100 research posters in African studies, biochemistry, biology, chemistry, economics, environmental studies, geology, history, mathematics, neuroscience, physics and psychology. Topics range from the economics of the Maine rockweed harvest to treatments for tuberculosis, and from the Arab Spring to the impact of algae blooms in Lake Auburn;

Anthropology students will give talks on their senior thesis research, which ranges from the analysis of pottery in early Roman Britain to ethnic agency in Uganda, while sociology seniors consider topics from social entrepreneurship in the local New American Sustainable Agriculture Project to the sexual assault nurse practitioner program in Lewiston;

Creative writing students will read from their poetry and fiction, and dance majors will discuss how they develop choreography;

Politics students will screen short video documentaries on 10 political organizations in Maine;

Research conducted with community partners and for the public good will be discussed by Community-Engaged Research Fellows who work through Bates’ Harward Center for Community Partnerships;

Symbolism in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings will be the subject of four talks by first-year students;

Presenters will discuss such topics as the media and the Boston Marathon bombing, visual narratives of Lewiston, rural health in China, the ways math is used in life sciences and the impact of too much oxygen on the developing respiratory system.